Commentary

1. En el díptico de las láminas [VI-VII], aparecen los personajes del Preste Juan, el Ber de Alejandría (sultán turco), y los caballeros de San Antonio Abad. READ MORE

   Como señalaba más arriba, el Preste Juan, es un personaje que ha servido al orientalismo occidental antiguo para designar a los soberanos desconocidos de Oriente. Jean Doresse cuenta cómo la localización de este soberano por parte de la tradición hagiográfica y aretológica occidental ha ido cambiando a medida que Oriente se ha acercado a Europa. Así, en el medioevo se asoció al Preste Juan con el Gran Kan de Mongolia, y las tierras que éste habría controlado (reino mítico de Gog y Magog). En 1329, el fraile dominico Jourdain Catalan de Séverac en su Descriptions des Merveilles, identifica al Negus de Etiopía como el Preste Juan.[98] Así, la imagen del Preste Juan se desplaza entonces desde los confines de Asia hasta Etiopía. Para Doresse, la genealogía de esta migración de la localización del mito está en el movimiento de los reyes magos, quienes también vienen de Oriente (San Mateo, II: 1-2). La tradición va a establecer entonces que el Preste Juan desciende de Melchor, el rey mago negro. En las leyendas mazdeanas, los reyes magos serían la progenitura de Zoroaster, cuyo semen habría engendrado en tres vírgenes. Los lugares de referencia de estas leyendas de origen están en los extremos del actual Irán. Pero en los tiempos de Aponte se usaba el término «Indias» para el Oriente asiático y también para el Oriente africano (Egipto, Abisinia). Así, las prédicas de Santo Tomas en «India» corresponderían a las tierras de Etiopía. (Pavez Ojeda 2006b, 707)

2. En estas láminas, Aponte pone en escena el conflicto armado que mantuvo el Preste Juan con el Ber de Alejandría, guerra en la cual este Preste habría contado con el apoyo militar de la Regla de San Antonio.READ MORE

   El libro del abisinio y monje de la Orden de San Antonio Abad, Juan Baltasar, del cual Aponte tuvo conocimiento y posible- mente consultó (sino directamente, al menos por glosas posteriores), trae noticias de este acontecimiento. El texto recuerda que la Regla de San Antonio Abad, recibía el impuesto que debía pagar el «Turco» (emperador gobernante de Egipto) al emperador etiope Preste Juan por los derechos de uso de las aguas del Nilo. Este impuesto lo recibía directamente el Gran Abate de la Regla abisinia que tenía sede en El Cairo.[99] De esta manera, el Preste Juan y la Regla de San Antonio mantenían una alianza tanto religiosa como militar, ya que la Regla era una orden militar y monástica con origen en Etiopía. El episodio retratado en la lámina y contado en el libro de Baltazar habría ocurrido en 1572: el Beglerbeley turco se negó a pagar el tributo que le debía al emperador Preste Juan, ante lo cual este último manda a inundar El Cairo construyendo compuertas sobre el río Nilo, para luego cerrar estos llamados «catadupos». El soberano turco se ve entonces obligado a pagar. (Pavez Ojeda 2006b, 708)

3. In the eyes of Spanish prosecutors, perhaps the most damning picture in the book was the one numbered 6-7.READ MORE

   The things that made it potentially subversive, however, would not have been at all apparent in Aponte’s initial description of it. Aponte began by pointing to the image of Mars pulled by two horses going up a hill, with a scorpion converted to a rooster. Mars, he explained, influences war, and it is a war scene that dominated the image. Prester John of the Christian Kingdom of Ethiopia led the Caballeros de San Antonio Abad in a battle against the Moors. (Ferrer 2014, 313)

4. The interrogators looked at the picture and immediately noted some things that Aponte had conveniently failed to mention.READ MORE

   First, Nerey observed not only that the soldiers were all dressed in black, but that the men themselves also appeared to be black. Why was that, he wanted to know. Aponte replied straightforwardly, ‘because they are naturales de Abisinia.’ Once Nerey’s questions made the men’s blackness part of the spoken record, Aponte felt the need to add unprompted, ‘because the Portuguese had discovered or conquered said part of the Globe, the two groups joined together for the Battle indicated.’ But the response did not make sense to Nerey. To him it seemed that the Portuguese, or the whites, were being attacked — and defeated — by the black army. Indeed, as he pointed out, the picture included two black men on horseback who carried the severed and bloody heads of what appeared to be two white (not Moorish) men. Here, Nerey seemed to suggest, was a clear depiction of what had long been referred to as ‘race war.’[87]

   Among the most curious things in Aponte’s response was the fact that he volunteered the description of the Portuguese as the ‘discoverers or conquerors’ of the region and as allies of the black army. Some have noted that Aponte may have drawn a parallel between the Moorish invasion of the Iberian peninsula and the contemporary struggle against the French invasion of the same territory.[88] While that is certainly plausible, it is conceivable that Aponte was also implicitly invoking recent Haitian history. Aponte’s picture of two armies — one black, one white — as allies might have prompted, among the black conspirators who pondered the image, discussions of the alliance of Jean-François’s black army and the once-conquering Spanish, an invocation perhaps made more relevant by the presence of Jean-François’s troops in Havana. On the other hand, Aponte’s insistence on the alliance between the black and white armies in the picture might have been an attempt at deflection, an attempt to explain away the image of a black army defeating the army of the white colonizer. That, of course, would have constituted an easy visual invocation of the Haitian Revolution, perhaps especially of the final, anticolonial stage of the revolution in which the black armies battled the French for independence and freedom. It is unclear whether Aponte thought these things when he drew the pictures. But his companions, like Nerey himself, could have easily seen in the image a straightforward representation of a black army defeating a white one. (Ferrer 2014, 313-314)

5. When he described the scene that looked like a race war (Image 6-7), he failed to note that the victorious army he drew was a black one; he admitted that only when asked directly by the interrogator.READ MORE

   Surely the interrogator did not pick up on every potentially interesting connection or observation, and Aponte would not have volunteered potentially subversive connections and readings. Yet their traces are there. (Ferrer 2014, 318)